DNA links San Diego man to golf pro’s slaying

MONTPELIER, Vt.  A San Diego man serving prison time for kidnapping a Chula Vista newspaper carrier has been transferred to Vermont, where he is facing charges in the cold-case slaying of a country club golf pro whose body was found there three decades ago.

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Vermont State Police shows Sarah Hunter, 36, a golf pro from Manchester, Vt., strangled to death in 1986. David Allan Morrison, in prison in California, was charged in July 2012 with first-degree murder in the the 1986 killing of Hunter. (AP Photo)The Associated Press

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Vermont State Police shows Sarah Hunter, 36, a golf pro from Manchester, Vt., strangled to death in 1986. David Allan Morrison, in prison in California, was charged in July 2012 with first-degree murder in the the 1986 killing of Hunter. (AP Photo)

David Allan Morrison, 54, pleaded not guilty this past week in Bennington, Vt., to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Sarah Hunter, who disappeared in September 1986.

Hunter was outgoing and well-liked and loved her job at the Manchester Country Club.

On Sept. 19, 1986, fellow golf pro John Ottaviano waited for her at a tournament in Bennington. But Hunter, who was always punctual, never showed up.

No one had seen her since the night before.

Then word spread that her car had been found, parked behind a carwash at a gas station in Manchester. Weeks later, her purse was located in brush along a road in Danby. Two months after she disappeared, a landowner discovered her body in a wooded area next to a cornfield in Pawlet. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

“It’s not a large community and to have somebody abducted and murdered was certainly out of the ordinary,” said Ottaviano, now superintendent of the country club. “It certainly shook everybody up.”

Morrison, who worked near a gas station and convenience store where Hunter had stopped Sept. 18, was a top suspect immediately, but investigators couldn’t find the necessary evidence to bring charges.

He left Vermont in 1988 and was arrested later that year in Oceanside, after he held-up an adult bookstore then led police on a brief chase. He was driving the same gray Hyundai that he stole from a newspaper carrier in an attack the week before.

The 20-year-old woman had been delivering papers in a Chula Vista trailer park when Morrison came behind her with a gun, forced her into her car and made sexual advances toward her, police said. She jumped out of the moving car, resulting in stitches to her face.

He pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder, sexual assault and kidnapping, and is serving a sentence of 20 years to life.

In 2009, police in California interviewed Morrison about an unsolved killing in California that was similar to Hunter’s. A detective told Vermont authorities Morrison denied killing the victim in that case but did not deny killing Hunter, the affidavit said.

Morrison indicated that the Hunter investigation was something he would deal with when he “felt the time was right” and he did not “think I will take this to my grave,” the affidavit said. He told police he had “made peace with it. I know her family hasn’t,” the affidavit said.

He said if he were going to talk about Hunter, it would have to be with the Vermont State Police detective who interviewed him after her death. Retired Sgt. Tom Truex agreed to travel to California. Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage asked that evidence collected from the Hunter crime scene undergo DNA testing before the interview.